Re: Attribute names

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 09:24 AM 8/18/00 +0200, mas@xinit.se wrote:
>I've read through many RFC's and there are a some attributes that are
>represented by two names, one long version and one short verstion e.g:
>
>commonname              cn
>surname                 sn
>givenname               gn

IIRC, gn is not listed in any LDAP RFC.

>organizationalunitname  ou
>organizationalname      o
>localityname            l
>stateorprovince         st
>
>What names should I use?

Short names.  

>In my opinion the longer names are better to
>use because the names are more descriptive?

As these attribute types are used in naming, short names are
preferred to keep the DN a reasonable length.

>But, in the slapd
>configuration files the shorter names are used and some LDAP clients
>I've seen also use the shorter names. 
>
>Are there any standards that describe when to use longer or shorter
>names (maybe some RFC)?

See RFC2256.  Also RFC2253, 2.3 has a table
of LDAP v. X.500 attribute type names.
Note the gn is not provided (I assume because it
is not commonly used for naming).

Kurt